Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.

A Fine Day for a Hanging

In 1955, former nightclub manageress Ruth Ellis shot dead her lover, David Blakely. Following a trial that lasted less than two days, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. She became the last woman to be hanged in Britain, and her execution is the most notorious of hangman Albert Pierrepoint's 'duties'. Despite Ruth's infamy, the story of her life has never been fully told. Often wilfully misinterpreted, the reality behind the headlines was buried by an avalanche of hearsay.

Fred and Rose: The Full Story of Fred and Rose West and the Gloucester House of Horrors

The true crime bestseller about Fred and Rose West a couple virtually unique in British criminal history - who loved and killed together as husband and wife. During their long relationship the Wests murdered a series of young women, burying the remains of nine victims under their home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, including those of their teenage daughter, Heather.

Alan Bennett: Plays: BBC Radio Dramatisations

A unique collection of 12 full-cast BBC Radio productions of plays by Alan Bennett. The titles are: 40 Years On, A Visit from Miss Prothero, Say Something Happened, Kafka's Dick, Two in Torquay, The Madness of George III, The History Boys, An Englishman Abroad, A Question of Attribution, The Lady in the Van, Cocktail Sticks and The Last of the Sun.

A Different Class of Murder

On 7 November 1974, a nanny named Sandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death in a Belgravia basement. A second woman, Veronica, Countess of Lucan, was also attacked. The man named in court as perpetrator of these crimes, Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared in the early hours of the following morning. The case, solved in the eyes of the law, has retained its fascination ever since.

The Murder Bag

Twenty years ago seven students became friends at their exclusive private school, Potter's Field. Now they have started dying in the most violent way imaginable. Detective Max Wolfe follows the bloody trail from the backstreets and bright lights of the city, to the darkest corners of the corridors of power. As the bodies pile up, Max finds he is fighting not only for justice, but for his own life....

Hitler: A Biography

Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.

Bravo Two Zero - 20th Anniversary Edition

January 1991: IRAQ. Eight members of the SAS regiment embark upon a top-secret mission to infiltrate deep behind enemy lines. Under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, they are to sever a vital underground communication link and to seek and destroy mobile Scud launchers. Their call sign: BRAVO TWO ZERO. Each laden with 15 stones of equipment, they tab 20km across the desert to reach their objective. But within days, their location is compromised. After a fierce fire fight, they are forced into evasive action. Four men are captured. Three die. Only one escapes.

Jeremy Hutchinson's Case Histories

A compelling portrait of the time when freedom of speech and the need to throw off censorship came to the fore, told through its great trials, from Lady Chatterley's Lover to Howard Marks. Born in 1915 into the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group, Jeremy Hutchinson went on to become the greatest criminal barrister of the 1960s, '70s and '80s. The cases of that period changed society forever, and Hutchinson's role in them was second to none.

SpeccieSeccie says:"Wonderful tour through some of the defining cases of the late 20th Century"

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse

1897: An elderly widow, Anna Maria Druce, made a strange request of the London Ecclesiastical Court: it was for the exhumation of the grave of her late father-in-law, T. C. Druce. Behind her application lay a sensational claim: that Druce had been none other than the eccentric and massively wealthy 5th duke of Portland, and that the now dead duke had faked the death of his alter ego. When opened, Anna Maria contended, Druce's coffin would be found to be empty. The legal case that followed would last for ten years.

The Golden Age of Murder

A real-life detective story, investigating how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction, writing books casting new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors' darkest secrets. This is the first book about the Detection Club, the world's most famous and most mysterious social network of crime writers. Drawing on years of in-depth research, it reveals the astonishing story of how members such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers reinvented detective fiction.

A Killer Among Us

On March 16, 1992, Elizabeth DeCaro, a 28 year-old mother of four, was found dead in her own home, murdered execution-style with two bullets to the head. Her husband, Rick, was immediately a suspect, having previously struck her "accidentally" with the family van after taking out a $100,000 life insurance policy on her. A Killer Among Us presents the true shocking story of Elizabeth's family and their search for justice against the man who continued to play father to the children whose mother he had killed.

There Must Be Evil: The Life and Murderous Career of Elizabeth Berry

In 1887, Elizabeth Berry found notoriety throughout the nation after the death of her daughter, perceived by many to be the cruellest of murders. There were many who protested her innocence in the affair, but there were also suspicions surrounding another death related to the nurse - that of her mother. Suddenly Elizabeth Berry's dark story began appearing darker still. For the first time we discover the true story behind this infamous case of the first woman to be hanged at Liverpool's Walton Prison.

The Real Great Escape

In early 1942 the Germans opened a top-security prisoner-of-war camp. Called Stalag Luft III, it soon contained some of the most inventive escapers ever known. They were led by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell who masterminded an attempt to smugglehundreds of POWs down a tunnel built under the noses of their guards. The escape would come to be immortalised in the famous film The Great Escape, but in this book Guy Walters takes a fresh look at this remarkable event and asks what was the true story?

The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes: Incredible Real-Life Murders

A gripping collection of stories of human criminality at its most bizarre.

These unusual, sensational murders recall not only gruesome historical crimes, but also touch on shocking and macabre modern murders. Included are details of groundbreaking advances in crime detection, law enforcement, and forensic science. This is the top-secret report on the most grisly, and unusual, criminal activity of our time.

House of Horrors: The Shocking True Story of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Strangler

To his neighbors, Anthony Sowell was a friendly and helpful former Marine. But they didn't know about his dark side - or the gruesome secret inside his house. Sowell's secret life was revealed to the nation on October 29, 2009, when a Cleveland Police SWAT team entered his house to arrest him for an alleged rape. They didn't find Sowell, but they encountered a nightmarish scene: two decomposed bodies in his third-floor living room. Eight more bodies were hidden throughout the house and buried in the back yard.

Dam Busters: The Race to Smash the Dams, 1943

It was the night of May 16th, 1943. Nineteen specially adapted Lancaster bombers take off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, each with a huge cylindrical bomb strapped underneath them. Their mission: to destroy three dams deep within the German heartland, which provide the lifeblood to the Third Reich's war machine. What followed was an incredible race against time, which, despite numerous set-backs and against huge odds, became one of the most successful and game-changing raids of all time.

Move Along, Please

At 10.41am on a Tuesday morning in September, Mark Mason boards the number 1A bus at Land's End in Cornwall. Forty-six buses and eleven days later he disembarks at John O'Groats in Scotland. Move Along Please is his account of that gruelling 1100-mile odyssey; a paint-by-bus-numbers portrait of Britain. Along the way he visits everywhere from the village where the internet enters Britain to the urban sprawl of Birmingham (inspiration for the Two Towers in Lord of the Rings).

400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons From a Veteran Patrolman

400 Things Cops Know shows police work on the inside, from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat - a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying, all within the course of an eight-hour shift. Written by veteran police sergeant Adam Plantinga, 400 Things Cops Know brings the listener into life the way cops experience it - a life of danger, frustration, occasional triumph, and plenty of grindingly hard routine work.

And Then There Were None (Dramatised)

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of a classic Agatha Christie mystery, starring Lyndsey Marshal, Geoffrey Whitehead and John Rowe. Ten guests travel to an island at the invitation of someone named U. N. Owen. All are strangers, but they have two things in common: they have all been responsible for someone's death, and none will leave the island alive.

The Misbegotten Son

An account of the crimes of Arthur Shawcross describes how the paroled child killer shot, stabbed, suffocated, and strangled 16 Rochester, New York, prostitutes and examines how the legal system failed his victims.

Britain etc.: The Way We Live and How We Got There

Award-winning journalist and editor Mark Easton takes us on a tour around modern Britain, with a look at 26 subjects and how we relate to them. An Encyclopedia of British culture, Easton covers, in alphabetical order, a diverse list of topics including Alcohol, Beat Bobbies, Immigration, Knives and Murder, The Queen, Umbrellas... and many more!

The Crown Tower: Riyria Chronicles, Volume 1

Hadrian, a warrior with nothing to fight for, is paired with Royce, a thieving assassin with nothing to lose. Together they must steal a treasure that no one can reach. The Crown Tower is the grandest fortress ever built and home to the realm's most prized possessions. But it isn't gold or jewels that their employer is after; if he can keep them from killing each other, they might just get him his prize.

Publisher's Summary

Between them, the three men in the fearsome Pierrepoint dynasty executed over 800 people during a career spanning more than half a century. Henry, his brother Thomas, and his son Albert, dispatched some of the most infamous criminals of the 20th century, and in the process earned a public notoriety that followed them throughout their eventful lives.For years, the three men were faced with the task - prestigious to some, horrific to many others - of being the last point of contact for the guilty and condemned. The Pierrepoints executed criminals the nation over before travelling to many countries including Egypt and postwar Germany, where they hanged Nazi war criminals, and gained a reputation as the world's most deadly practitioners of the art of hanging."Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners" recounts the intriguing stories of the three men and the effect that their macabre occupation had on their personal lives. This definitive guide is filled with shocking inside tales from the official records and diaries kept by the Pierrepoint family. With revealing insights into the intense rivalry between fellow executioners, new light is shed on the menacing world of years gone by.

This book was written a bit differently than what I was expecting from the blurb about the book. I was expecting a biography type story of the men and their lives, instead it is mainly a chronicle of their more famous executions. The time frame of the book is from 1903 to 1956 when the death penalty was revoked. The opening of the book is what I was originally expected, in that, it tells about Henry's application to be an executioner, the process at the time to be come one, the interviews he went too and the training he took. Once he started working as an executioner the story mostly changed to the person to be executed and their crime. Albeit, I did find it interesting and noted how murder has evolved in society over the years. I found the stories in World War One and World War Two intriguing the execution changed from murder to treason. The part of the story covering post WWII war crimes trials and executions were fascinating, I am well versed in the American Nuremburg trials but was unaware of the British War Crime Trials of the concentration camp commandants and guards. I would like to learn more about the trials by the Allied countries and how they decided which country would try what type of war crimes. The last part of the book covered the controversy of the death penalty and Albert's response to it. Steve Fielding did a lot of research to gather the material for this story. Norman Gilligan did a great job of narrating the story.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Julia

19/09/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"A Superb & Accurate Study of a Macabre Subject"

The Pierrepoint Family were an interesting bunch as they were known for 'telling a few tales'!

I was brought up in post WWII Great Britain. We still had rationing. Women still cried into their aprons at the mention of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be 'dispatched' courtesy of the Crown on that horrible wet and foggy July morning in 1955.

The Pierrepoint men, two brother and one son were three of the Queen's executioners. I think that many people would think that it would be some kind of macabre 'calling'. Perhaps it was, in a way but this volume which is so well and accurately written makes it quite plain that not only were the Pierrepoint 'boys' financially motivated but also were all of the other Executioners on 'The List' of available trained and approved executioners.

I have listened to this book a couple of times as I enjoyed the content but I really could not figure out whether I enjoyed the Narrator's style. Initially I could not figure out whether he was reading a book about this serious yet alarming subject or reading a book of nursery rhymes! All of a sudden I had my "AHA!" Moment! The narrator was reading the facts, just the facts. We have to remember that we are listening to 12 hours of very disturbing facts and not some cheap cheesy 50 cent novel.

This book is a journey and an interesting one at that. Especially if you are like me and you follow it up with a little extra reading. Albert Pierrepoint, after spending many years of dispatching criminals to the abyss changed his mind regarding the Death Penalty. Albert eventually became an ardent abolitionist.

I highly recommend this book.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

David

Seattle, WA, United States

26/07/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Reads like an accountant's journal."

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

This is a listing of Pierrepoint's "clients." Very little insight into the man, , his uncle, or his father. Pierrepoint: Executioner was a better read, but neither book opened the door on how it really feels to hang so many men and women.

Would you ever listen to anything by Steve Fielding again?

That would depend on the reviews. I purchased the Pierrepoint book without reading what others had to day. I am not sorry I did, for what it has it is informative, but it missed the mark.

What didn’t you like about Norman Gilligan’s performance?

Nothing, the performance, because of the prose, was stilted and wooden.

Any additional comments?

Pierrepoint was never very forth coming about his profession. I surmise that he would have been content never to have become a person of public acclaim. I choose to believe that in the end the notoriety is what made him give up the business.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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